Just then, Deifilius raised his voice.
His amplified words echoed through the Coliseum.
“…Is it true the child she carries is from the seed of another male, brother Balidor?” the monk asked. “Rumors reached Rome that she strayed from the Illustrious Sword’s bed. That she took another lover. That she was with him for months, unable to wait for her own husband while he did her bidding in another part of the world.”
Balidor’s expression showed him to be unimpressed.
“Do you have an answer for the Sword, brother Deifilius?” he said. “This offer does not have an unlimited shelf life. We have business elsewhere in the world.”
“Ah, yes.” Deifilius’s smile returned. “So I hear.”
Balidor’s expression shifted to a delicate frown.
I frowned too, giving Cass a worried look in spite of myself.
“In the Americas, is that not so?” Deifilius’s smile widened as he paused, gauging Balidor’s face. “We are already making preparations to go to see them, Adhipan Balidor. I admit, it is why we were at somewhat of a disadvantage in the caves this morning. Our telekinetics are already being readied for deployment on that other matter––the matter of annihilating the last of your pathetic stand against God and history.”
Deifilius clasped his hands at the base of his back, looking down at Balidor.
“It will be interesting to see if your beloved ‘Sword’ fares as well against an army of his own kind.” He spoke Revik’s title with open contempt. “An army with access to the same advantages and accidents of birth he was given. I suppose if he doesn’t make it to the Americas soon, we will never find that out, though, yes?”
Making a graceful, almost seer-like gesture with his hand, he added,
“In case you doubt the veracity of my words, I will do you the courtesy of being specific. We were told to look for your sad band of traitors in the red-rock desert, among the ancestral remnants of the savages of those lands. New Mexico, I believe? Yes? There are sacred rocks there? Some other such pagan nonsense?”
Grunting, he waved dismissively with one hand.
“My masters were kind enough to give me very precise directions. Our main forces have left Rome already, and have only to pick up reinforcements from a few of our other military arms on their way over the ocean.”
At Balidor’s silence, Deifilius quirked an eyebrow.
“I don’t suppose your people can move out of there fast enough to save themselves, can they, brother Balidor? They are all on foot at this point, are they not? Or were you thinking your precious Sword and Bridge would rescue them? Fly their loyal subjects out themselves, ahead of us? To go where? To do what?”
He made another noise and gesture of contempt.
“This sad pretense of theirs is almost at an end, my friend,” he said, shaking his head. “You are running out of doors. You are assuredly running out of time.”
“Dugra-te di aros… u’hatre davos…” Holo swore under his breath.
I lay a hand on his arm, but my heart was beating louder in my chest.
“Your masters?” That time, contempt reached Balidor’s voice. “What an interesting euphemism.”
Despite his anger, I could hear in his voice that Deifilius’s words shook him.
“There is no euphemism, Adhipan Balidor.” Deifilius’s smile grew. “I am not the slave you imply. I give myself to them willingly, freely, with love, obedience and affection. I did so even as a child. Although, in fairness, I did not understand the full import of their visions then. It was enough to feel the truth of it in those years. Understanding came later.”
Balidor’s voice filled with a harder pity.
“You understand far less than you think, cousin.”
Deifilius’s smile didn’t waver.
It remained warm––friendly––as did his eyes.
“And yet,” he said. “I have been given no cause to question that decision in all the years since. Rather, my resolve and gratitude grows more with each passing day, Adhipan Balidor. The more experienced in the world I become, the more I appreciate their wisdom––”
“Then I truly do pity you,” Balidor cut in, his voice sharper. “But none of that answers my Illustrious Intermediary’s question, Deifilius.”
There was another silence.
In it, Deifilius steepled his fingers in front of his chest, as if thinking.
From next to me, I felt a pulse of frustration leave Holo’s light.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Holo muttered from beside me. “Having a staring contest? Didn’t ‘Dori hear what that fucker just said? We have to get out of here!”
“They’re stalling,” Cass muttered back, before I could answer. “One of them is, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “But which one?”
They both looked at me.
Then all three of us looked back at the sandy arena floor.
For the first time, I noticed all the seers who’d been engaged in one-on-one combat now clustered behind Balidor, forming a disjointed half-circle around him, maybe to keep him from escaping. I couldn’t tell anything from their blank faces, or their eyes, which regarded Balidor as if he were a dangerous animal, or maybe an alien life form.
“Will you let us pass?” Balidor said, speaking louder.
Deifilius sighed, crossing his arms over his robed chest.
After a pause, he shook his dark curly head.
“No,” he said. “I am afraid your Sword’s threats are not enough to cause the loyalty of the Order of Three to waver. Fear of death is not something that moves us, Balidor. Whether that fear comes from butchers, traitors, cowards, fallen angels, bitch intermediaries and their whipped mates… or from the One True God himself.”
There was a silence after he spoke.
Then Balidor executed a flawless bow, his voice unerringly polite.
“Very well,” he said.
When he rose back to his full height––
He vanished.
38
FREEING LIONS
GASPS BROKE OUT in the audience when Balidor disappeared.
I blinked, too.
It had never once occurred to me he might be a hologram. I wondered if I missed it from being blind at the lower levels, or––
Both Holo and Cass shook their heads.
“Not a hologram,” Cass murmured. “It was something else.”
I looked at her, frowning. “Something else? Like what?”
Widening her eyes slightly for emphasis, Cass shrugged with one hand. “No idea. I imagine you’ll have to ask your guy when we catch up to him. It had a quasi-physical-something. Not just Barrier. Something directly related to his physical body––”
“––Definitely a strong Barrier component, too,” Holo said, supporting her words. “But she’s right. He infused something into it, some element of physicality.”
“Revik, you mean,” I said, frowning.
“Presumably, yes––”
Before Holo could finish, an explosion rocked the Coliseum.
It was followed quickly by two more––hollow, booming concussions that shook the stone arena, briefly blurring my vision.
Gasping, I gripped the stone, sitting up. Looking around, I didn’t see smoke, or anything that told me where the explosion occurred. Screams filled the amphitheater though, even as people rose to their feet.
We rose to our feet too, looking toward the exits, then down at the arena floor.
Across from us in the stands, I could already see people running for the dark arches leading back into the lower levels of the coliseum.
“There’s going to be a fucking stampede in here,” Cass muttered from next to me, looking around and frowning. “We might need to get out of here.”
“What if they need us?” Holo protested.
Another explosion went off, and he ducked in reflex, even as the screams around us rose higher, growing more shrill.
Rising back to his full height
, Holo glanced around, scanning the area briefly to make sure no one was listening to us talk.
“…We can’t just leave,” he said, moving closer and speaking lower, but loud enough to be heard over the screams. “Not without some kind of signal, or some idea of what they’re doing––”
“Holo.” Cass gave him a hard look. “We might need to get her out of here.”
She angled her head towards me meaningfully, and I saw understanding reach the male seer’s eyes, right before they widened.
I couldn’t help noticing Cass stood slightly in front of me, her arm held out to shield me, although there was nothing there to shield me from.
Not yet, anyway.
Truthfully, the whole thing mostly made me roll my eyes.
“Let’s stay put for now,” I said.
Someone slammed up against my side and shoulder and I let out a grunt, shifting my weight to press up against the stone steps as the heavyset Italian man and his family shoved past us towards the exits, gripping their blankets, cooler, food basket and backpacks. Two sleepy-looking kids, maybe eleven and eight, pushed past after him, followed by his wife, who paused to scowl openly and without explanation at me and Cass.
Watching them go, I frowned back at Holo and Cass.
“What the fuck did he hit?” I muttered.
I’d already gone back to scanning the walls of the Coliseum.
Holo touched his headset, frowning. “The Vatican. They took out the Basilica.”
“Jesus Christ.” Cass looked up and back, paling. “Are you kidding me?”
Holo shook his head, once. “From what the local feeds are showing, he more or less leveled it. The smoke should be visible soon––”
Another explosion rumbled the ground under our feet.
It was quickly followed by three more.
More screams erupted from the stands.
I gasped, gripping one of Holo’s arms in one hand and one of Cass’s in the other. All three of us stood there, panting, as the ground rumbled again.
“That was the Palace of the Governatorate,” Holo said, speaking loud over the screams. “He’s taken out most of the catacombs under the Vatican, too.”
“Jesus Christ…” Cass gasped.
“They can’t get to him,” Holo said. “He’s erected some kind of light wall––”
He broke off, getting hit from the other side as humans began streaming down the steps above, most of them abandoning their things now and screaming as they ran for the openings leading into the arch-filled corridors below.
Climbing up on the stone bench where I’d been sitting in an attempt to get away from the worst of the crowds, I pushed off people who got too close as they began to flood towards the exits.
“We have to get the fuck out of here!” I yelled. “They’re stampeding!”
I looked towards the walls, trying to find a spot where no one was running or cramming up against the exits, but there were still too many people.
Then something else occurred to me.
“Feigran!” I shouted, turning on Cass. “Where’s Feigran? Do you have him?”
I saw her eyes widen as my words sank in.
Both of us turned at the same time, looking behind her.
I stared past her shoulder, still gripping her arm.
I saw bodies running, shoving, and screaming their way towards us. I saw humans pushing down the stone aisles, trying to force their way to exits above us and below, both to our left and our right. I could see black smoke now, too, drifting across the blue sky above the Coliseum, visible between and through the red awning panels.
I could smell smoke, along with sweaty bodies, alcohol and perfume as people pushed their way past us, panic in their eyes.
What I didn’t see was Feigran.
The prescient intermediary with his dyed-black hair, brown suit, diamond earring, and red leather shoes, was no where to be seen.
Feigran was gone.
“Fuck,” was all I could say.
“WHERE?” I SAID, out of breath. I leapt down to the next stone bench, without looking back. “Where next? Cass? Still this direction?”
From behind me, Cass sounded equally out of breath.
She also sounded frustrated.
“I don’t know for sure. I think so,” she said, grumbling, “His damned light is so hard to keep a hold of. He seems to be making a game of it, to try and confuse me––”
“Keep tracking him!” I snapped, leaping down to the next bench and then on to the one after that with long strides. “We have to find him. Now. Someone’s going to notice soon, that we’re not leaving with everyone else. At the very least, they’ll send flyers. We can’t afford to be this conspicuous. Not until we know where the others are.”
I felt her understand, nodding as my words sank in.
I also felt her agree with me.
Her mind turned over the fact that the Mythers would be desperately looking for us––desperately looking for me, especially, since I was the best leverage they could have over Revik, and Revik had already positioned himself as their main threat.
Then again, Revik had drawn all of their attention to the Vatican, including what was likely most of their security and military forces.
I glanced over at the emperor’s box, which was totally empty.
I’d already noticed it emptied out quickly, faster than anywhere else. I had no idea how they left the stadium, but clearly it wasn’t via the same exits the rest of the crowds used.
The seers who’d been engaged in one-on-one combat had all vanished, too.
The rest of the Coliseum was still in the process of emptying out.
Unfortunately, that meant Cass, Holo, and I were pushing against the current of just about every remaining spectator in our section of the stone stadium. All of them were running away from the sandy floor of the arena, not towards it. They all headed for the nearest exit they could find, which meant most either ran up the steps we were running down, or sideways, along one of the aisles to an exit on their own row.
None were running towards the arena floor.
No one but us.
I couldn’t feel Holo as well as I could Cass, since he didn’t have those higher structures unique to Elaerian light, and likely because he wasn’t one of the Four. When I glanced at him, however, I saw a frown on his sweaty face as he leapt down benches to my right.
I’d tried finding Feigran too, of course.
All I’d gotten was the equivalent of Feigran humming to himself in his head, utterly content with wherever he was, and whatever he was doing.
So, yeah––I got why Cass was annoyed.
The people in the stadium were finally starting to thin out. It was making it easier to get down the steps, but it was also making our continued presence here more obvious. We were only about ten rows away from the guardrail above the Coliseum floor now, and the main event arena. Just below and to my left, I could see the lions pacing in front of the iron cage of Listers.
Then I saw something else.
I came to a dead stop, right in the middle of the stone bench.
Holo ran into me, even as Cass came to a stop on the bench just below us.
When she looked up and back, frowning at me, I pointed at the lone figure standing in front of the lions.
He wore a brown suit and a dark red tie with a diamond tie pin that matched his dark red, leather, Italian shoes. His black hair hung stylishly to his shoulders in a coiffed wave, his shoes and lower pant legs dusty from the sandy floor of the auditorium.
As I watched, he held out a hand to one of the male lions, letting the big cat sniff him curiously.
“Jesus Christ.” Cass stared at the male seer, then back up at me, her face paling. “What the hell do we do now?”
I shook my head, frowning.
Glancing around, I saw guards still stationed in the corners of the arena. A few of them were staring at Feigran now, hands on their weapons.
If we went down there, we’d ha
ve every eye left in the place on us.
Either way, Cass and I might need to exercise our telekinetic toys to get us out of this, if we wanted Feigran back alive. I wasn’t sure how that might impact whatever Revik was doing, though… especially since I still had absolutely no fucking idea what his plan even was. If he was deliberately drawing all of their security and military forces to the Vatican, I didn’t want to interfere with that. I also didn’t want to give them a head’s up I was here.
On the other hand, we couldn’t let Feigran get shot.
We also needed those Listers in the cage he now stood directly across from.
“What the hell do we do?” Holo said, mirroring Cass’s words and still fighting to catch his breath. “Do we go down there?”
Still frowning, I watched a flyer whizz by, moving closer to where Feigran stood, presumably to get a look at him. I wondered if the prosthetics he wore would be enough to confuse a sustained scan of his person.
Given what he was doing with the lions, they likely already knew he was a seer.
Without thought, I shorted out the flyer’s scanning capability.
Luckily, it was one of the models I’d studied from Dante’s specs. Once I’d blinded it from anything but the visible spectrum of light, I diverted it, sending it over to watch the crowds still shoving and screaming and forcing their way through the too-narrow corridors.
“Did you do that?” Cass said, staring at the flyer as it zoomed off.
I nodded, folding my arms. “Buying us time,” I muttered, clicking under my breath. “Did you try talking to him? Feigran?”
Cass rolled her eyes.
“Sort of? He just started telling me how soft the lion was.” She grunted, folding her arms as she went back to watching him as he stroked the mane of the largest of the eight lions. “He didn’t seem all that interested in coming back.”
I was about to answer her, when a voice rose in my mind.
Baby?
I flinched…
Then relaxed all at once.
Where the hell are you? I sent, unable to keep the relieved, scolding annoyance out of my thoughts. Jesus. Are you trying to give me a fucking heart attack? Do you have any idea what you would do to me, if I did this to you?
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